Brawner: The next Arkansas AD? Put it on the Fitz

Sunday

Nov 26, 2017 at 12:01 AM

By Steve Brawner

Dr. Fitz Hill should be the University of Arkansas’ new athletic director.

Hill until last year served as president of Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock. The historically black school, founded in 1884, was in a death spiral when Hill arrived there in February 2006. Its student body had dropped to less than 200. Its facilities were in disrepair, and its centerpiece, Old Main, was a decaying hunk of brick and mortar. It was only a matter of time before the school closed its doors.

That’s when Hill showed the difference one man with a vision, a dream and a lot of passion can make. He determined that ABC would be the college for students other colleges rejected. He recruited people off the street, offering them a chance for an education and redemption. The college’s enrollment grew well past 1,000. He inspired the support of heavy hitters such as former Alltel CEO Scott Ford while taking advantage of the government’s New Markets Tax Credit Program. As a result, Old Main was completely refurbished, and many other improvements were made on campus. Finally, Hill made ABC’s mission about much more than just granting degrees. The school housed a program for prison inmates, offered a GED program, and took over a crime-infested car wash down the street, using the proceeds to purchase nearby rundown homes.

Truly, ABC became not just a college, but an opportunity center. He simply would not accept that some people are fated to fail.

ABC was one of my clients for several years. Somehow, I was asked to publish its newsletter, “The Vanguard.” It was one of the biggest honors of my career. Here I was, as white a guy as you’ll find, producing a publication whose roots reached back a century for a college serving students throughout the civil rights struggle.

In that capacity, I heard Hill speak many times. And I’m telling you, the man could go down to a Crimson Tide booster club in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and within five minutes have them calling the Hogs.

For Hill, it was never easy. Even while he was saving the college, it still had its ups and downs trying to maintain its finances and academic accreditation. The shooting death of a freshman football player across the street from the campus was an especially trying time. Dr. Hill is a man, not a miracle worker.

A little more than a year ago, he relinquished the presidency. He now serves as executive director of ABC’s Scott Ford Center for Entrepreneurship and Community Development. Gov. Asa Hutchinson appointed him to the State Board of Education, where he’s leading a task force studying discipline issues.

While education is a passion, football is his first love. The Arkadelphia native was playing at Northeast Louisiana as a freshman when his father’s illness led him to transfer to Ouachita Baptist University so he could be at home. Six weeks after his father died of stomach cancer, his mother suffered an aneurysm followed by a stroke. Hill considered dropping out of school, but in that trying time, OBU football coach Buddy Benson challenged him to overcome his struggles, as his parents would want him to do. He joined the football team, becoming an all-American at wide receiver. After earning a Bronze Star in the Gulf War, he spent nine years as a recruiting coordinator and receivers coach at the University of Arkansas and then four years as head football coach at San Jose State University. At ABC, he started a football team and other sports programs. He recently helped start a sixth grade football team in Little Rock.

When I asked him if he would accept the AD’s job, he said he was “humbled and honored that members of the media would even mention my name, to be quite honest.” He’s also been mentioned as a Little Rock mayoral candidate. Asked about that, he was more direct, saying, “I am not a candidate.”

In other words, he sounds interested. For Hill to accept the athletic director’s job, he’d have to see it as a calling from God. If he did, he’d personify the admonition of Ecclesiastes 9:10: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”

Give Hill the job, and the university will have the country’s most passionate, inspirational and visionary athletic director. Who better?

Steve Brawner is an independent journalist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.

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